Re: [Help-bash] declare -i

[Dan Douglas]

On Tuesday, May 08, 2012 08:55:26 PM Bill Gradwohl wrote:

> Is there a write up somewhere that explains what exactly -i does internally?
> 
> Are variables declared -i stored in binary?
> 
> Is there any advantage or disadvantage to using -i for speed, memory 
efficiency, etc?
> 
> Thank You
> 
> -- 
> Bill Gradwohl

INTERNALLY? I believe they are stored in exactly the same way as any other
variable, they just get the -i attribute added as metadata. The ksh88 manpage
states that -i may be faster, but I believe in Bash it's actually slightly
slower, which makes sense because now all assignments are subject to an extra
evaluation step, and operators are modified such as the behavior of += in
several places.

Using -i can be an easy source of bugs and security problems, and adds a lot 
of
quirks especially with arrays.

-- Dan Douglas

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